


Stranger Indiana

by flashforeward



Category: Eerie Indiana, Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2017-12-02
Packaged: 2019-02-09 17:14:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12892824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flashforeward/pseuds/flashforeward
Summary: There's a new game at the arcade and Max decides to give it a shot.





	Stranger Indiana

**Author's Note:**

> Written for this years Eerie, Indiana advent calender. The prompt was Arcade

On the side of the machine, large yellow letters proclaimed that the arcade's latest addition was a game called _Eerie, Indiana_. Max hadn't heard of it before, but she figured she may as well try something new. She popped some coins in and pressed play. It was fairly boring to start, a little more world set up than she'd been expecting. Apparently Eerie, Indiana was a town full of weirdness (which hit a little closer to home than she'd been expecting) and the player's job was to uncover and battle said weirdness.

Max was about fed up with the exposition and was considering just moving on to a different game when the screen went black. For a second, she thought it was broken, but then yellow letters appeared on the screen, typed by an invisible hand: _Still don't believe me? You will._

The screen stayed stuck on those words and Max pounded on the start button with the heel of her hand, frustrated that she'd wasted money on this glitchy piece of shit. As she brought her hand down a third time, a static shock jolted through her hand and the screen went to static. Max pulled back and landed a hard kick against the side of the game.

"That one's never worked," someone behind her said. She whirled around, ready to ask why the hell they'd installed it, then, but the kid standing behind her froze the words in her throat. He was about her height with shoulder length brown hair and a baggy green coat. He was _also_ the player character from _Eerie, Indiana._

"Sorry," he said with a shrug, taking a step back under her scrutiny.

Max didn't really hear him. Slowly, she turned back around to look at the arcade game. It had changed. The lettering had shifted from yellow to red and instead of _Eerie, Indiana_ it now said _Stranger Things_. Max wasn't sure what that meant, but the clips on the screen were all too familiar: demo-dogs.

"Where am I?" she asked as she watched a pack of them race through the Hawkins night.

"Er. The Eerie arcade?" the boy said.

"Eerie," she whispered, taking a step closer to the game. "Eerie, Indiana?"

"Uh. Yeah."

She pulled a few quarters from her pocket and fed them into the game, ignoring the kid telling her it was a bad idea. She pressed start, grinning at the shock that hit her hand and the static that filled the screen. She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them again she was back where she'd started, standing in front of the _Eerie, Indiana_ game while a clip of a kid with gray hair shooting a half-transformed werewolf played on the screen.

She breathed a sigh of relief, stepped to the side and unplugged the machine.

This town was weird enough without video games that sucked you into them.

\--

"We had another one," Marshall said, rejoining Simon at the snack bar. "But she left right away. Figured it out really quick, too."

Simon added her to the list. He thought about suggesting they go through, but he knew Mars would just shoot him down again. He still maintained there was only so much data you could get questioning confused kids just after they arrived from whatever was on the other side of the game, but he'd do it Marshall's way - the safe way - for now.


End file.
